Turning my OEP into a collaborative one

Hello everybody!

Last days we were working in our Open Educational Projects again to make them collaborative ones!

A collaborative project (following the definition of Teach the Earth) allows “groups of people to work together to create online content."

In order to enrich our project we should make it collaborative, but how?

Well, let me explain that there are several types of collaboration (open collaboration, close collaboration, cooperative learning, and so forth), but we will focus on three kinds of collaboration:

- Collaboration in the classroom through cooperative learning. Cooperative learning is “working together to accomplish shared goals” (co.operation.org). Learners do more difficult tasks that are planned to do in groups, if not they will find the activity hard, difficult, and exhausting. In this way, students learn beyond simple contents and deeper skills than if they do the task by themselves. In addition, pupils learn to collaborate, which is vital to be better citizens and solve crucial problems that we are facing concerning social and environmental issues.

- Collaboration out of the classroom, through projects with external collaborators such as other classrooms, schools, companies, experts, and so forth. As well as that, collaboration out of the classroom is not only good for learners but also for teachers who can exchange ideas with other teachers, experts, or learning communities.

- Collaboration back to the classroom, in which learners will spread their learning (of the two previous collaborative learning) to the world so that they will collaborate with the learning community. 

In the web page developingchild.harvard.edu we can find a pretty good definition of LEARNING COMMUNITY. It is a long one but worthy. 

“Learning communities provide a space and a structure for people to align around a shared goal. […]They connect people, organizations, and systems that are eager to learn and work across boundaries, all the while holding members accountable to a common agenda, metrics, and outcomes. These communities enable participants to share results and learn from each other, thereby improving their ability to achieve rapid yet significant progress.”

Now that we have learnt a little bit about the theory of collaborative projects, let me explain how I turned my Open Educational Project into a Collaborative one.

If you do not remember what my project was about, you can click here.

So, I just followed the previous steps about collaboration and I changed the activities that I planned for my students into the following ones:

• ·      Collaboration within the classroom

I have changed all the activities of the didactic unit about plants. Some of my activities were individual ones but now all them are collaborative, and children do not have to do any task by themselves. Then, children will accomplish many tasks in pairs or in groups of four students. They will work in groups but not always in the same ones, because I will mingle the students each time we change to a different activity.

So, students will do all the planned activities in groups of four and they will have to do a final mission. This final mission consists of making a big display about plants and taking care of them. So the whole group of students will have to accomplish this mission using handmade displays or ICT tool such as MindMeister or Canva to make displays and print them.

• ·      Collaboration out of the classroom

In this case, the teacher will have to find a ‘sister’ class or the whole groups of students with the teacher’s help can find it through social networks. It will be advisable to find a class from a foreign country (because the benefits are much better).

My students will be divided into pairs and each pair will be paired up with another pair of students from the ‘sister’ class. They will have to create a wiki using Wikispaces in which they will compile photos of plants and they will categorize them (flowering plant, non-flowering plant, sexual reproduction, asexual reproduction, gymnosperms, angiosperms). My students will have to communicate with the other students through emails, so each pair of students will have to create their email account. They can use Gmail or Hotmail.

To do this, we will go to a botanical garden (field trip) where students will be able to take the pictures that they will need with their tablets.

• ·      Collaboration back to the classroom

To collaborate back to the classroom, the whole group of students and the teacher will get in touch with a biologist via Twitter, Facebook, or any social network. The students will invite the biologist to come to the school and make a speech about how to take care of the plants and the planet.

Once the whole process will be finished, the students will make a summary about their learning process of each collaboration form and they will spread their learning to the world. Parents could see what their children do, teachers can see an innovative way to engage children in learning, and many people can learn from our learning process.

I created a flyer to summarize the change of my project so that it will be easier to understand it.

I used the tool Smore because it allows you to create larger flyers with plenty of information and pictures. I tried different web sites such as Canva or Easel.ly but I found some problems. In the case of Canva you cannot include much information although their templates, pictures, and drawings are fantastic; and with Easel.ly I could do an appealing min map but I preferred something different with pictures and with a layout similar to a flyer. Smore might be similar to Piktochart, tool that I have used and which I will speak about in my next post.

Smore is easy to use since the templates guide you to create a display as well as the website include a short  and helpful tutorial. It might be the easiest application because it does not include many options, although you may do a great job.

PROCEDURE

So, to turn my Open Educational Project about plants into a collaborative one I followed the next steps:

1. I fulfill a little research about the three types of collaboration to understand them in depth.
2. I think in ways to change my projects following the characteristics of the three kinds of collaboration.
3. I looked for the right tool in which I could represent how to turn my OEP into a collaborative one.
4. I did the flyer about the key points of the change.

REFLECTION

Actually, with this challenge I learnt many things. First and foremost, the most important fact that I learnt is that there are different kinds of collaborative learning, even more than the three types in which I worked this time. This fact is an important issue that it should be taught even at universities since it is essential in order to change our "Industrial Revolution" education system. Students are so different from those in the 19th century, so this is a way to do the best of the education system and of our teaching.

As well as that, I am feeling very proud of my job because I improved my project and now I know how to implement collaborative learning into my teaching process. I hope my future students will be happier and more motivated if I use it. On the other hand, firstly, I thought that it was almost impossible to integrate the three collaboration learning into my project, but finally it was possible. I did the best of myself to do it. 

I firmly believe that students learn through experiences and not by heart, so collaborative learning is a nice approach to do it. Besides, collaboration is a really good value that help to improve our behaviors with other people and with the environment. 

That is all for this post, so I am looking forward to reading your feedback and suggestions, and do not forget:

BE CLEVER, BE GREENER!